Mary did not care much for these. "She
is all intellect," said a friend who knew her well; "she does not know
that she has a body to care for."

She had now saved enough money to enable her to spend one term at the
Sanderson Academy at Ashfield. What an important event in life that
seemed to the struggling country girl! The scholars watched her
bright, intellectual face, and when she began to recite, laid aside
their books to hear her. The teacher said, "I should like to see what
she would make if she could be sent to college." When the term ended,
her little savings were all spent, and now she must teach again. If
she only could go forward with her classmates! but the laws of poverty
are inexorable. Just as she was leaving the school, the trustees came
and offered the advantages of the academy free, for another term. Did
ever such a gleam of sunshine come into a cloudy day?

But how could she pay her board? She owned a, bed and some table
linen, and taking these to a boarding house, a bargain was made
whereby she could have a room and board in exchange for her household
articles.

Her red-letter days had indeed come. She might never have a chance
for schooling again; so, without regard to health, she slept only four
hours out of the twenty-four, ate her meals hurriedly, and gave all
her time to her lessons. Not a scholar in the school could keep up
with her. When the teacher gave her Adams' _Latin Grammar_, telling
her to commit such portions as were usual in going over the book the
first time, she learned them all in three days!

When the term closed, she had no difficulty in finding a place to
teach. All the towns around had heard of the surprising scholar, Mary
Lyon, and probably hoped she could inspire the same scholarship in her
pupils, a matter in which she was most successful.

As soon as her schools were finished, she would spend the money in
obtaining instruction in some particular study, in which she thought
herself deficient. Now she would go into the family of Rev. Edward
Hitchcock, afterward president of Amherst College, and study natural
science of him, meantime taking lessons, of his wife in drawing
and painting. Now she would study penmanship, following the copy
as closely as a child. Once when a teacher, in deference to her
reputation, wrote the copy in Latin, she handed it back and asked him
to write in English, lest when the books were examined, she might be
thought wiser than she really was. T